o the wants of the fashionably-gowned women
and brightly-uniformed men who filled the magnificent hall.

"How absurd that woman looks," Margaret said, "sitting with her back to
that figure of Isis." She knew now at a glance the goddess Isis as she
was most familiarly represented. "I do hope I don't look quite so
grotesque!"

Michael looked at the woman, whose hair was decorated with an enormous
egrette's crest, in the manner of a Red Indian's head-dress. Margaret
knew quite well that she herself did not in any way look grotesque;
since she had been in Egypt she had conceived a horror of the
eccentricities of Western fashions, therefore her speech was insincere.

"Of course you don't," Michael said absently. "You look just awfully
nice." He felt shy and blushed as he spoke, for he knew that he had
severed himself from Margaret by an unspeakable gulf, that he had now
no right to say anything intimate to her. Earlier in the evening he
could have said with frank enthusiasm how beautiful he thought her, if
an occasion like the present had offered itself.

They were now at the ice-creams, wonderful concoctions with glowing
lights inside them, and their futile conversation had dribbled out, but
the silence which had fallen upon them was constrained; it had nothing
in common with the old happy silence of mental sympathy, the silence of
united minds.

Margaret had still two dances to give Michael, and she wondered how
they were to get through them. The supper had proved heavy and
dragging. It seemed scarcely possible that they were the two people
who had stood, delighting in each other's companionship, on the high
ridge of the Sahara desert two evenings ago, that it was this man to
whom she had told her wonderful dream. She wondered if he had
forgotten it.

As she thought of her dream, their eyes met. Michael's dropped
quickly. With Mrs. Mervill's kisses still burning into his soul, he
banished the thought of the divine King. The seed of evil which she
had planted in the garden of his soul many weeks ago had been watered
and nourished to-night. It had sprung forth like the green blades on
the banks of the Nile after the inundation.

As Michael's eyes dropped, Margaret took her courage in both hands and
said as brightly as she could, "We're not enjoying ourselves
particularly, are we? We seem to have lost each other. Shall we cut
our two dances and try to find ourselves again in the valley? I hate
this so